Obesity remains a serious health problem and it is no secret that many people want to lose weight. Behavioral economists typically argue that “nudges” help individuals with various decisionmaking flaws to live longer, healthier, and better lives. In an article in the new issue of Regulation, Michael L. Marlow discusses how nudging by government differs from nudging by markets, and explains why market nudging is the more promising avenue for helping citizens to lose weight.

Two long wars, chronic deficits, the financial crisis, the costly drug war, the growth of executive power under Presidents Bush and Obama, and the revelations about NSA abuses, have given rise to a growing libertarian movement in our country – with a greater focus on individual liberty and less government power. David Boaz’s newly released The Libertarian Mind is a comprehensive guide to the history, philosophy, and growth of the libertarian movement, with incisive analyses of today’s most pressing issues and policies.

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Topic: Cato Publications

The House bill to require photo ID for voting rests on the premise that voter fraud is a significant problem. It turns out that premise is a little shaky. A report prepared for the U.S. Election Assistance Commission has found little evidence of polling-place fraud, according to USA Today.

I’ve written here before about “political facts,” things made true by consensus rather than any measurement or observation. The soaring costs of identity fraud and its relationship to data breaches are political facts that have a lot of currency in Washington today.

Another political fact getting a lot of attention and lather is the notion that child pornography has become a $20 billion dollar industry. “Exponential” growth of this problem is being used to justify legally mandated retention of data about our online travels by Internet service providers. Exploitation of children is loathsome, but it turns out the $20 billion figure is bunk.

One wonders how many other problems Congress addresses itself to might be exaggerated or even fictional.

A few years ago “soccer moms” were all the rage among political consultants. Then it was “NASCAR dads.” But only 4-5 percent of voters really fit the “soccer mom” profile, and only 2 percent were “NASCAR dads.” Tomorrow Cato will release a study showing that there are far more libertarian voters than soccer moms or NASCAR dads. Maybe politicos should pay attention to them.

My former colleague David Kirby, now executive director of America’s Future Foundation, obtained data sets from Gallup, Pew Research Center, and the American National Election Studies. He did some original calculations to find libertarians in those polls, and then he and I wrote up the results. Without scooping our own story, I’ll just say that we found that a substantial percentage of voters are libertarian – not libertarians who can compare and contrast Hayek and Rand, but people whose views on broad issues distinguish them from both liberals and conservatives.

We think our data undermine the whole idea these days that the electorate is polarized, that everybody’s either red or blue, that there’s no more swing vote. Indeed, one of the most interesting things we found is that libertarians are a swing vote. They voted very differently in 2004 from most previous years. How? Check our homepage Thursday.

[c]ompanies that persist in offering such benefits are placed at a disadvantage when their competitors don’t. And consumers clearly can’t afford those benefits, either. As some recent surveys have made clear, precious few Americans can afford to buy medical insurance on their own or to utilize the Health Savings Accounts that the president is peddling.

Taking Meyerson’s points in reverse order:

His comment that HSAs are unaffordable makes no sense. Does he mean premiums? HSAs are required to be coupled with high-deductible insurance, which has lower premiums than other types of insurance. So the insurance component of HSAs is more affordable than … well, anything else. Does he mean out-of-pocket expenses? Sherry Glied and Dahlia Remler report that “the groupresponsible for half of all medical spending would see no changeor a decline in cost sharing at the margin and on average” with HSAs. That is, the people who need the most medical care would have less financial exposure with HSAs. Soooo, Meyerson should like HSAs, right?

Meyerson plays blame-the-victim with the individual health insurance market. Meyerson writes that “precious few Americans can afford to buy medical insurance on their own,” as opposed to having their employer purchase coverage for them. Let’s set aside that workers pay for the cost of those benefits through reduced wages. The feds and state officials have wrecked the individual market by (A) diverting consumers to employer-sponsored insurance and Medicaid, and (B) driving customers out with costly regulations. If Meyerson and I set up fruit stands on opposite sides of the street, and the government whacks people with a 2x4 whenever they tried to cross to Meyerson’s side, would he attribute his lack of business to, say, market failure?

Meyerson fails to consider that the market may be sending him a message. He complains that consumers cannot afford to purchase for themselves the benefits that employers had been purchasing for them. Again setting aside that workers were paying for those benefits all along, might that mean that traditional employer-provided health benefits were unsustainable? Perhaps that they were contributing to rising health care prices & premiums?

A new report on health savings accounts (HSAs), published by the Kaiser Commission on Medicaid and the Uninsured, is wrong or misleading in nearly every particular. In essence, the report claims that HSAs are not good for poor people, when in fact all it shows is that poverty is not good for poor people.

Keyed to a recent report showing the costs of compliance at $11 billion, the piece notes that all Americans will have to reapply for their drivers’ licenses and ID cards if states go along with this unfunded federal surveillance mandate. It also addresses whether a national ID protects against terrorism or provides effective immigration control and finds REAL ID wanting on both counts. My book Identity Crisis shows why.

Sooner rather than later, Congress will recognize its error in passing the REAL ID Act. Most likely it will try to kick the can down the road. Look for a quiet attempt to change the deadline for getting a national ID in everyone’s hands.

But that is not the solution. If Congress wants a national ID, it should have hearings, markup and pass legislation, then fund and implement a national ID itself.

Congress didn’t have a single hearing or up-or-down vote on the REAL ID Act. This much exposure would kill a national ID plan, of course.

This weekend, something pretty important happened, at least with regard to how the free-market movement approaches Medicaid and medical care for the needy.

Saturday was the final day of the State Policy Network’s 14th annual meeting in Milwaukee. The State Policy Network provides guidance to 48 state-focused free-market think tanks in 42 states. Part of the annual meeting was a panel on Medicaid, the joint federal-state program originally created to provide medical care to the truly needy.

Of course, Medicaid has swelled well beyond that goal. The program now covers 52 million people even though there are only 36 million U.S. residents below the poverty line. Medicaid also destroys private markets for health insurance and medical care, and induces low-income Americans to become dependent on government. For example, policymakers universally acknowledge that a welfare check induces dependence on government. Yet average Medicaid benefits for the program’s least expensive enrollees (the non-elderly) are worth twice as much as the average welfare check. Moreover, there are 10 times as many people who receive Medicaid benefits.

For years, several market-oriented groups have advanced Medicaid reforms that, in the name of empowering Medicaid enrollees or improving their quality of care, would expand enrollment and make Medicaid’s problems even worse. Principally, the reforms involve introducing health savings accounts and vouchers into Medicaid. Those groups have fed the rest of the free-market movement a steady diet of those bad ideas, often with some success. A few states have even experimented with those reforms.

On Saturday, I sat on a panel with one of the leading advocates of those proposals. We each presented our side to an audience comprised of the leaders of dozens of state-focused think tanks. I think one audience member probably spoke for many in the room when he said he felt conflicted. My paraphrase: “Part of me wants to improve Medicaid, but that would increase enrollment. And part of me wants to blow it up, but that’s a tough sell politically.”

He’s right. That is a tough political sell. But it would be substantially easier were the free-market movement to abandon the fool’s errand of trying to improve the program and instead educate the public about the full range of harms Medicaid causes:

A per-capita tax burden that is currently over $1,100 and growing

An annual deadweight economic loss of some $70 billion

Crowd-out of private efforts to provide medical care for the poor, including private insurance, private charity, and self-help

The indignity of states having to beg Washington for permission to spend their own money as they wish

(For what it’s worth, free-market think tanks should acknowledge that Medicaid does a lot of good: it provides medical care to many who desperately need it. Yet that fact will hardly carry the day, considering that researchers have difficulty finding where Medicaid has any positive overall effect on health.)

Only after we prepare the ground will we be able to achieve serious reform, which should emphasize three things: block grants, block grants, and block grants. Replacing Medicaid with a system of block grants was a component of the 1996 welfare reform law until President Clinton insisted on its removal. Nowadays, no politicians are talking about block-granting Medicaid, largely because free-market groups have abandoned the field. (Until we get block grants, state-level reforms will not make much difference, though free-market groups should oppose those that make Medicaid more attractive and support those that make it less attractive.)

In short, this emperor has no clothes. If the free-market movement does not carry that banner, no one will.

DETROIT–Over at Cafe Hayek, Russell Roberts looks at the ethics of distributing flu vaccines amid an artificial shortage and does a good job of cutting to the core question: why the hell is there a shortage? Roberts lays the blame at the feet of politicians — particularly state attorneys general — who have interfered with the market’s ability to make vaccines (like shoes, oranges, etc.) plentiful.

The ethical problems created by the artificial shortage of vaccines are like those created by the artificial shortage of transplantable organs (also a creature of government interference). Once the shortage exists, and the state controls distribution, there’s really no good way — no “most ethical” way — to decide who should receive them. In other words, there’s no good way to decide who shall live and who shall die. If it’s ethics you’re interested in, try this: Don’t interfere with the market’s ability to supply vaccines and transplantable organs.

But as long as we’ve got these artificial shortages, my two cents is this: the politicians should be last in line.